Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I have described the opening scene of TEOTG to dozens of people over the years, and it always provokes a terrific reaction.A consummate cat & mouse story of two strong wills, a tooth-achingly gorgeous woman, and a dead body. Shaw is in his usual brilliant form. Ritt's performance is extraordinary. Voight is believable and compelling. Bisset is spectacular to watch. Sutherland must have had fun playing the corpse. Directed by Maximilian Schell, and originally titled Der Richter und sein Henker and released in W Germany in 1978 (?), TEOTG became (and remains) my definitive detective mystery.Be sure you get the full-length version in the language that you want. You won't regret renting or buying this classic film.

Maximilian Schell directed, co-produced, and co-adapted this screenplay, based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's book "The Judge and His Hangman", about a cunning murderer who began his crimes in 1940s Istanbul with the thrill-killing of his friend's girl; thirty years later in Switzerland, the friend is now a Commissioner who links his former acquaintance to the murder of a patrolman. Jon Voight plays an investigator who has an affair with the lover of the deceased, not knowing she's also involved with the criminal suspect. Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw are the adversaries, and both are exceptional, with Shaw (in a bald cap) glimmering with decadent evil. However, Voight (his accent on and off) and Jacqueline Bisset fail to come up with anything interesting, and neither is photographed well (both look white and pasty). The film's monotonous rhythm is helped occasionally by the punchy editing, but Schell seems to lose his grip on the narrative after the intriguing opening sequences. Some of the director's small, throwaway moments are best, but his grand gestures do not work at all. *1/2 from ****

Martin Ritt is absolutely spellbinding. He embodies one of the most unforgettable men I have ever met on the screen. It is a neat little thriller, and Shaw is fine as the would-be super-villain, but it is Ritt that still haunts my thoughts and dreams years after my three viewings of this film; I would love to get it on tape.

I saw the movie a long time ago, in a class in (German) highschool. I remember being mesmerized by the book for which I can not find a translation in English. It's one of the greatest whodunits of all movie history. Baerlach the old Police Kommissaire has one more year to live due to illness just when a policeman is found dead on a country road near his native Swiss town. Baerlach lets his over-eager deputy Tschanz handle the investigation, knowing full well it will lead Tschanz to an old nemesis of Baerlach's, a criminal that he could never get his hands on. The investigations seem to be unsuccessful, but Baerlach knows something that Tschanz doesn't, and has a plan.